


The Power of Love 2.0

by WinchesterWarrenSon



Series: The Power Of Love [2]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Djinni & Genies, Family Drama, Gen, Problems with Unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 16:57:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4027684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinchesterWarrenSon/pseuds/WinchesterWarrenSon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "The Power of Love." They may have broken the djinn's spell, but that doesn't mean everyone's back to normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Power of Love 2.0

After the aftermath of their encounter with the djinn, Gohan was fine. Outside of being more sluggish and getting more tired more easily than usual, he was fine. 

Vegeta and Piccolo wanted to test how Gohan's strength faired now, but they both had different concerns they were busy addressing, and tests of strength could wait for later. 

During meditation, Piccolo found himself falling into the same dream state as when the magic spell had been placed on him. He was steadily learning how to pull himself back out, but he had yet to figure out a way to do it efficiently and quickly. 

But the dreams stayed vivid, feeling almost real, and it was real, true dreaming, and this must be what sleep felt like. 

_Mister Piccolo! Look! Butterflies!_

One night, he showed up at Gohan's house and knocked on the door. Videl opened the door, eyes widening with surprise. 

"Piccolo! Come in. It's been a while." 

"Yeah.... Is Gohan here?" 

"No, he's actually attending a conference right now." 

Pan waddled over to her mother and Piccolo, hugging Piccolo's leg. 

"Hi, Mr. Piccolo!" 

Piccolo smiled down at her. 

"I, uh, I was wondering if I could ask you a favor...." 

"Sure. What is it?" 

"Can . . . can I stay the night here?" 

He explained how Namekians aren't supposed to sleep, but that he had been sleeping. 

"I'm . . . I'm afraid I won't be able to pull myself out of it. . . ." 

Videl frowned, then put her hand on Piccolo's shoulder. 

"Of course you can stay the night here. You can stay as long as you need to." 

He slept in the guest bedroom, and Videl checked on him in the morning and gently shook his shoulder to help wake him up. 

When Gohan returned from his conference later that day, he was caught up on the problem and immediately agreed that Piccolo could stay as long as he wanted.

Gohan did his best to figure out what was wrong, and if he didn't have the answer, research was his go-to. They didn't have a lot of books on genies or djinn immediately on hand in their house, but he made some trips to the library. Pan and Piccolo went with (Videl had to be at work), and both of them watched as Gohan struggled to carry a giant stack of books. Piccolo frowned before coming over and taking them off his hands. 

"That's weird.... I didn't have that much trouble with that many books before...." Gohan said, frowning and his eyebrows knitting together. 

Pan hugged Gohan's leg, and he bent down to pick her up and hold her as they went to the check-out station. 

Research took time, so they didn't receive any answers soon, and there really wasn't any guarantee that they'd be able to find any kind of answer. 

One evening, Videl came home to see Gohan, Piccolo, and Pan all slumped in chairs, asleep on top of books about djinn. She smiled softly, moved to get a couple blankets for Gohan and Piccolo, then picked Pan up and took her to bed. 

 

Bulma's annual get-together party was coming up, but she was too distracted when it came to planning for it. Mrs. Briefs ended up filling in the blank spaces in her planning notes. 

Vegeta had been having trouble with waking up in the morning, and it used to be that he was the first up and at it in the gravity room for training. Though Bulma rarely shook him awake, he still managed to wake himself up. It was always with a start, and he was always angry when he did so. 

"God-fucking-dammit!" Vegeta would scream and slam his fist onto his thigh in frustration. 

He didn't tell Bulma the exact details about his dreams, but it was the same as the illusion the djinn put on him. 

The halls of the royal palace were high and ornate, and his father still stood just a bit taller than him, so that Vegeta still had to tilt his head up. That was one tip off that it was an illusion. He knew he had grown to be the same height as his father. They would have been on exact eye level, but Vegeta had no memories of ever seeing his father like that. In all his memories, King Vegeta was taller than him. 

Kakarott in his dream looked at home in the Saiyan armor and challenging Radditz to a good-natured brawl for fun. 

His "mate" was a typical Saiyan woman: dark hair, indicating purity of blood, breasts so small they were barely distinguishable from the male chest, and well-toned muscled arms and legs. (The breast size was indicative of both muscle mass and the steady evolution towards ridding themselves of the need for providing breast milk. They had pods to handle infant nutrition, and there were rather strict instructions for higher class Saiyans on what kinds of physical attributes their women and men must have. Low-class Saiyans wanting to imitate the higher class ones followed suit, generally speaking.) 

Their "children" were not distinguishable by gender, and they all looked like him. The perfect Saiyan brood. 

It pissed him off to see them and it was what woke him up every time. 

He didn't want to talk to Bulma about how badly he did wish his planet had never been blown up. How he missed his (admittedly terrifying) father and mother. How he wished he didn't have to acclimate to human society and raise the children he already had in Saiyan culture. Pure Saiyan culture, not this diluted form he was forced to adjust to. 

But he was aware of what he would have to not have in that culture, if the planet was still there, if his father still lived and held him to the expectations of a Saiyan prince. 

Bulma Briefs never would've made the cut in his kingdom's eyes, and his children would have been considered less than and culled. 

The illusion - and by extension the dreams - dangled something he truly did want in his face, then reminded him every night about the cost that would have had. He knew that he did not love those children he produced in that dream, and the conflict it caused in his brain with the fact that he _did_ love his half-human children was what really took him into lucid dreaming and _that_ is what made him wake up every morning. 

While it wasn't quite a conscious decision, Vegeta was trying to avoid going to sleep. He started drinking coffee and trained for hours through the night, long after Bra had gone to sleep, and often he could see that Trunks was actually still awake keeping teenager hours by the light emitting from his room whenever Vegeta would leave the GR to go pee and eat something and try to keep himself awake with something else. 

It didn't always work, and he wasn't getting as much sleep as he should've been because of the dreams and trying to stay awake, and that was overall affecting his performance in training and his interactions with others (more so than his personality did, that is). It was a noticeable shift, and it was worrying everyone. 

 

Chichi was truly struggling with Goku. The worst part was that it wasn't that he was staying asleep at night, but he was daydreaming rather heavily while awake. 

"Goku. _Goku._ Goku!" 

He wouldn't respond for ten, twenty minutes, and not even grabbing him to shake him would snap him out of it. 

She couldn't get him to tell her what it was exactly he was seeing. Part of him didn't know how to tell her, but a lot of it was that he didn't want to share. 

_"Aw, look at how much you've grown, Goku! And you've improved so well with your martial arts! Tell you what, why don't we have roast tiger for dinner?" Grandpa said, reaching out for his hand and Goku taking it ecstatically, tail wriggling back and forth._

A part of him . . . knew it was idealized, that it wasn't entirely what had happened, but a lot of it was exactly as it had happened. And every time he was brought out of the daydream, he remembered it was his fault Grandpa was dead, and that made his lips cement shut whenever Chichi tried to talk to him. 

_Swinging from tree to tree with Grandpa, looking up at the stars at night, going from a training session to a tickle fight._

Chichi honestly thought this was worse than him being gone, fighting aliens and androids. It hurt so much to know that he was _here_ and yet so far away. And she didn't know how to help - _couldn't_ help - and he didn't want to talk to her. 

The daydreams would occur multiple times a day, and on days where Chichi was just too tired, she reached a point where she just didn't try to get him out of it. 

 

Piccolo, Gohan, Vegeta, and Chichi talked about the different effects of the djinn encounter at Bulma's get-together, the others sitting around them and listening. 

"I don't get it. Why would it have such varying effects? I mean, it's affecting Piccolo and Vegeta the same, but - " Gohan said. 

"But you aren't experiencing any dreams and your sleep isn't affected, and Goku...." Piccolo said, looking pointedly in Goku's direction. 

Goku wasn't looking in their direction, more at the table in front of them, and his eyes weren't focused. 

"And the rest of us aren't affected at all, despite being exposed to her magic," Krillin said, Goten and Trunks nodding in agreement. 

"Ugh, I wish I could find some clue at to how to fix it, but there really isn't anything in any of the libraries I've checked that have anything that would apply to the situation in them. I'm half-tempted to say there isn't anything in a language I can understand available to help us...." Gohan said, knowing that would hurt his mother to hear, but lying about the situation wouldn't help anyone. 

Chichi's hands were shaking, and Videl put her arm around Chichi's shoulders. Simultaneously, Piccolo and Gohan had both reached out to hold her hand, but Piccolo's hand retreated after he realized Gohan was going to do it. 

"I'm not giving up, though, Mom, we'll figure something out," Gohan assured her. 

Pan stood by Goku's chair, staring up at him. Her little face got super serious, then she took a deep breath. 

"GRANDPA! WAKE UP!"

She startled everyone, no one having expected her to suddenly shout. But for Goku, the word Grandpa shattered through the daydream haze, and he jumped in his seat, back suddenly straight and rigid, eyes sparking to life as though powered by electricity. Everyone stared at him and watched him as he blinked and looked around, trying to remember where he was and put together what was happening. 

"Grandpa!" Pan said, and Goku turned his head and looked down at her. 

He put a smile on his face. "Hey, Pan!" 

Pan climbed up into Goku's lap, and Goku gave her a hug. She giggled. 

"Fixed 'im!" Pan said, but both Gohan and Chichi could see just a tiny bit of confusion lingering in his eyes, as though he really wasn't sure what was going on or where he was. 

Chichi started to wonder just how often Goku grinned and smiled without having any idea what was going on. 

He wasn't fixed, he was just awake and aware right now, and there was no way to know how long this period of awareness would last. 

 

Later during the party, Vegeta and Piccolo tested Gohan's strength, with Trunks and Goten watching on the sidelines. 

They did not spar for very long before it was very clear that Gohan had become significantly less strong and unable to withstand superpowered attacks as a result of the djinn encounter. Videl and Pan came running when they heard Gohan scream from broken bone, and Piccolo was extremely apologetic. 

Trunks and Goten frowned and looked at each other. 

"That's really not good," Goten said. 

"Yeah. Just what the hell is a djinn, and what do they need Saiyan strength for?" Trunks said. 

Goten shrugged, then went to help Videl and Piccolo get Gohan to a hospital. 

Gohan ended up having a sling for his arm for weeks, and Piccolo helped him with his work while the arm was out of commission. 

 

The longer Piccolo was active in Gohan's life - living with him and taking care of Pan when Videl and Gohan were both working and spending time with the whole family - the less the dreams occurred. 

Vegeta eventually discovered that the dreams lessened the more he played a more human-version of a father. The more involved he became in Trunks's and Bra's lives, the more he accompanied Bulma to business parties, the more he was able to sleep undisturbed. 

Goku, however, didn't get better. He didn't get worse, but he didn't get better. Between daydreaming and focusing on training more than anything else when he wasn't daydreaming, eventually Chichi just left the house. Goku didn't notice for a few months before he realized she had left and wasn't coming back. He didn't do anything about it. Sometimes Gohan or Piccolo came to check up on him, and sometimes they brought Pan. It was only when Pan was there when he didn't daydream at all during the duration of her visit, with a chorus of Grandpa Grandpa Grandpa. 

Nothing changed until Pan was ten-years-old.


End file.
